http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Hungarian_script The Old Hungarian script (in Hungarian known as rovásírás, or székely rovásírás,[1]székely-magyar rovás; for short also simply rovás “notch, score”[2]) is an alphabetic writing system used by the Magyars in the Early Middle Ages (7th to 10th centuries). Because it is reminiscent of the runic alphabet, the Old Hungarian script has also popularly been called “Hungarian runes” or “Hungarian runic script”. The script is adapted to the phonology of the Hungarian language, featuring letters for phonemes such as cs, gy, ly, ny, ö, sz, ty, ü, zs.. The modern Hungarian alphabet represents these sounds with digraphs (letter sequences used to write a single sound) and diacritics. The Hungarian Runes are related to the Old Turkic script, itself probably (though debatedly) deriving from Aramaic script.[3] This is supported by the Hungarian tribes’ early geographical proximity to the Göktürks. Moreover, all the letters but one for sounds which were shared by Turkic and Ancient Hungarian can be related to their Old Turkic counterparts.

The runic script was first mentioned in the 13th century Chronicle of Simon of Kéza,[9] where he stated that the Székelys may use the script of the Vlachs,[10][11]possibly making a confusion between the runes and Cyrillic script (as the Romanian Cyrillic alphabet was used to write the Romanian language till 1860–1862 and remained in occasional use until ca. 1920): “… non tamen in plano Panonie, sed cum Blackis in montibus confinii sortem habuerunt, unde Blakis commixti litteris ipsorum uti perhibentur”(=”…although not on the Pannonian Plain but among the borderland mountains along with the Vlachs [where] they mixed up with them and so allegedly they use their letters“)

In the region north of the Caucasus, west of the Ural mountains up to the Carpathian Basin several related, though different, yet undeciphered scripts exist. All of them feature characteristics in ductus which can be called “runiform”.

Within the Carpathian Bassin some of these scripts, which do not constitute Old Hungarian, are e.g. the relic from Homokmégy (of which a Turkic reading has been proposed), needle-box from Szarvas (with Hungarian and Turkic readings proposed), and most prominently the inscriptions of the Treasure of Nagyszentmiklós, a precious golden hoard of unknown origin (various Turkic readings proposed). While the Szarvas and the Nagyszentmiklós inscriptions share the same script, the Homokmégy finding is written in another. Neither is Old Hungarian.

Due to the polysemy of rovás, rovásírás which can be understood, and is also used, as ‘runiform script’, but is also commonly used as ‘Old Hungarian Script’, these scripts are often confused, and relics of the latter ones are often found cited among the OHS findings. Quite confusingly, the numerals are often referred to as integral part of the script, while their pairing is 20th century invention. The counting system existed independently of the Old Hungarian Script, it is probably of different origin, and we have no historical source containing both alongside each other.

<<The texts bellow are just part of my lectures, do not represent my convictions. However I made some comments on the texts ..>>

I. The meaning and importance of the Hun-Magyar (Hungarian) rovás (runic) script The runic script (‘rovás’ writing, lit.: carved writing) is the ancient script of the Magyars. Its exceptional significance lies in the fact that it verifies the ancient Hungarian presence in the Carpathian Basin of at least eight- to nine-thousand years, and the Magyar-Scythian-Hun-Avar continuity.

<<Out of my humble lectures I understand so far that Scythians were Indo-Europeans and NOT Uralic/Turkish as the Magyars. According to the Continuity Theory of Alinei the Proto-Magyars related to Etruscs, that came down to Pannonia at –1250, or even much sooner, are Uralic/Turkish people maybe related to the Magyars that came 2000 years later. Maybe there is a relation between Hun and Avar Empire as they were both Confederations of several nations, many of which for sure had continuity during the Hun and Avar Empires. So there can not be ONE Magyar-Scythian-Hun-Avar continuity, but at least 2 to superimposed lineages and several influences: 1) Scythians/Indo-Europeans, 2) Proto-Magyars and 2000 years later Magyars; hunmagyar.org 3) Hun/Avar Turkish migrations, 4) Celtic lineage; 5) Goths, Gepids and so on. Pannonia as all big planes were too open for a single continuity.>>

Hungarian chroniclers and scientists, like SimonKézai, MárkKálti, JánosThúróczy, AntalVerancsics, IstvánSzamosközi, JánosThelegdi, JánosKájoni, MátyásBél, among many others, call this script Scythian-Hun writing. The expression rovásírás was coined by the leading sculptor JánosFadrusz at the beginning of the 20th century. It is more accurate to use the term Scythian writing, even though, according to some relics, this writing already existed 20 thousand years ago in the Paleolithic Age. We do not know by what name the Hungarian ancestors, who carved these letters onto wooden sticks and lived at that time in the Carpathian Basin, called themselves. The ancestors of the Hungarians used this writing in the entire Carpathian Basin and helped its spread to distant lands. The written words that remained among the common people indicate that there was no illiteracy from the most ancient times on. Everyone, from the simple shepherd boy to the king, knew how to write.

II. The place of the Magyar runic script in the universal history of writing. The writing systems of the world are organized into the following categories: hiero-glyphs, ideograms, and syllabic and phonetic writing in which every sound (phoneme) is marked by a separate letter (grapheme). The internationally accepted theory, which holds that the first phonetic writing was created by the ancient Semites of the Sinai some 3,500 years ago, can be disputed on two grounds. One reason for opposing this view is that, in this Sinaitic writing, the vowels were not marked, so it cannot be considered to be a phonetic writing that follows the sounds. The consonants, which are lined up side by side – in absence of vowels – can be interpreted in several ways. For example the “g.m.l.” can mean both a camel and the rope of a ship, truly different meanings. In the ancient Magyar runic script, the vowels – A (Á), E (É), I, O, Ö, U, Ü – all had a separate letter. The Hungarian language owes its beauty partly to the fact that it avoids the clustering of consonants.

The second argument that the Sinaitic writing could not have been the first phonetic writing comes from the fact that neither the scholars who hold this view nor the Hungarian writing experts were sufficiently familiar with the ancient Magyar system of writing. I. G. Gelb, of Polish ancestry, was a professor at the University of Chicago and was considered to be one of the greatest international experts in writing. He stated that the Magyar runic alphabet consists of 12 (!) characters, even though a copy of the Gyergyószárhegy stick calendar of the 12th century had already been known for decades, and also the 32 runic characters of the Nicholsburg alphabet, which originated from before 1483 (the former is owned by the Library of Bologna, the latter by the National Széchényi Library in Budapest). Even the knowledge of the Hungarian experts is scant or inaccurate. Béla Kéki‘s book Az írás története (The history of writing) shows the alphabet of the afore-mentioned stick-calendar with many mistakes and the direction of the Konstantinápolyi Felirat 1 (Constantinople Writing) from 1515 is incorrectly portrayed in his book.

In the Magyar runic script, every sound of the Hungarian language has a letter and, therefore, we can state that this writing developed along with the language. It was not borrowed or adopted from someone else. When we were forced to change over to the Latin letters in the 11th and 12th centuries, there were no letters for 13 of the sounds of the Hungarian language (TY, GY, NY, LY, SZ, ZS, CS, K, J, Á, É, Ö, Ü). With this writing system (i.e. Latin), which was completely indequate for the Hungarian language, the development of literacy was impeded for centuries and Hungarians were forced to adopt the low level of literacy of contemporary Europe. For example the word “gyümölcs” (fruit) with Latin letters could be written only as “gimilc” in the absence of adequate letters, and in the Vizsoly Bible, they wrote the word “új” (new), as “WY” as late as in 1590.

Taking into consideration Hungarian language relics from the Paleolithic, the Tatárlaka discovery, and archaeologist Zsófia Torma‘s (1840-1899) discovery of several thousand written tablets from the banks of the Maros River in Transylvania, we can justly suppose that the oldest writing on our globe developed in the Carpathian Basin. The fact that the signs on the Tatárlaka disk are 1,000-1,500 years older than similar Mesopotamian hieroglyphic signs reinforces the hypothesis that the cradle of writing was the Carpathian Basin. The Hungarian people, whose ancestors created these letters, still live there.

<<I guess the author refers here to the Indo-European lineage of the Hungarian people as the other lineage – Uralic/Turkish appeared thousands of years after the creation of the tablets found on the banks of the Mures River, after the Vinca culture. And by Hungarians we can mean today the people living in Pannonia with Y-ADN similar to the nations around, and not the Uralic/Turkish/Magyars that were absorbed. eupedia.com/forum >>

The Magyar runic script – considering its age – could not have adopted signs from others, but the ancestors of Hungarians were the disseminators of writing, in many instances. Therefore, we may recognize ancient Magyar (<<Runic / Vinca signs>>) letters, with more or less different sound values, for example, in ancient Chinese, in the Pelasgian, Etruscan, ancient Greek, Phoenician and Iberian languages, in the Latin capital characters and in the Türk and German runes. Ferenc Kállay wrote in his book A pogány magyarok vallása (The religion of the pagan Magyars, 1861), that the Pelasgians imported 16 Scythian letters to Greece.

<<In my opinion we can not talk about Magyar script 10.000 years ago! We can talk only about Vinca script prior to any other writing, with certain signs similar to signs found LATER all over the world. But ancestors of the people living in present day Hungary probably can be traced down to the oldest script.>>

Based upon the testimony of the remaining runic texts, we may safely state that the ancient runic script was the first alphabetical writing on Earth, formed in the Carpathian Basin, and, being the source, it greatly influenced the later developing writing systems of other peoples.

III. Some significant remains of the Magyar runic script and important milestones. The oldest writing discovered in the Carpathian Basin comes from the Jankovich Cave of Bajót, from a 15-20,000 year old layer. On both sides of the broken off stick, runic-signs are lined up, among which we can also see a probable SK ligature.

Picture 1
Stick fragments from the Jankovich Cave

In 1961, in a cremation grave in Tatárlaka, archeologists found a burnt clay disk, measuring six inches in diameter, on which the runic signs for the letters Z, Ny and Gy can be seen. Its age is approximately 8,000 years.

Picture 2
Tatárlaka Disk

Zsófia Torma, the world’s first female archaeologist, excavated 4-6,000 year-old clay disks from the banks of the Maros, on which writing is found. On several of her finds, displayed in the Museum of History in Kolozsvár 2, ligatures are visible.

The picture of a three-thousand year old bronze hatchet-case, which was found on the meadow of Campagna, near Rome, was drawn by archaeologist, John Lubbock, the later Lord Avebury, in his book Prehistoric Times, in 1865. He came to the conclusion that it was made in the Carpathian Basin and it is of Scythian origin. A sentence written in ligatures reads “Segít is, üt is, ró is” (‘It helps, it hits and writes too‘). It was deciphered by Judge Miklós Debreczenyi in 1914.

Picture 3
Bronze hatchet case

On 14 of the 23 gold vessels of the Nagyszentmiklós 3 Treasure, there are runic writings. Researchers place these into the Avar age. In this writer’s opinion, this treasure belonged to Roga, King of the Huns (390-434) and his family.

On the Szarvas needle holder of the 7th century Avar period, there are approximately sixty runic signs. Its extraordinary importance lies in the fact that it was found in the grave of a female of the common people and so it testifies to the literacy of the Hungarians (Avars) in an age when not even Charlemagne, Emperor of the Franks could read and write.

The inscription on a blow-pipe from a 9th-century foundry at Bodrog-Alsóbű, from the time when the Magyar group of Árpád entered the Carpathian Basin, testifies to the literacy of the common people and, at the same time, indicates the high technical level of the foundries which superseded those of Europe.

L.F. Marsigli, an Italian military engineer, copied a stick calendar with runic writing, in 1690, in the Franciscan Abbey of Gyergyószárhegy. The last word of this 200 letter inscription is Áldás(‘blessing’) which is the greeting of the Táltos 4.

The Nicholsburg Alphabet was written before 1483 and it can be seen at a large exhibition at the National Széchenyi Library.

Picture 4
The Nicholsburg Alphabet

The inscription from the Csíkszentmiklós 5 Church (according to other sources the Csíkszentmárton 6 Church), built in 1501, is another proof of the literacy of the common people and it contains the names of the builders of the church. We have only copies of it.

Picture 5
Inscription from the Csíkszentmiklós Church

The few afore-mentioned examples of the Magyar runic script have helped us familiarize ourselves – without the claim of completeness – with those who preserved the most important part of the ancient Hungarian culture, the writing. This includes the following:

István Szamosközi (1570-1612), historian of István Bocskai, recorded his visit to the Library of the Count of Florence, where he saw a printed (!) book with Scythian letters. We also have his notes written in runic script.

In 1598, János Thelegdi (1574-1647), later Roman Catholic prelate, assembled a sixteen page-long schoolbook about the rules of the ancient script. He uses the Pater Noster and the Credo as text-exercises. Regrettably, we have it only in faulty copies. Thelegdi was also the writer of the book Rudimenta, Priscae hunnorum linguae… (The rudimentary elements of the old language of the Huns). His goal was to spread again the knowledge of the runic writing.

János Kájoni (1629-1687), Franciscan friar, who was a collector of folk songs, an organ builder and the developer of a printing press, was active in preserving runic alphabets.

György Muzsnai, Unitarian minister, prepared the inscription of the Énlaka 7 church in 1686.

Péter Bod (1712-1769) a pastor of the Protestant Church, was a writer, who also prepared a dictionary. A runic inscription and a list of letters have remained from his work.

Károly Antal Fischer (1842-1926) is the author of the book A hun-magyar írás és annak fennmaradt emlékei (The Hun-Magyar writing and its remaining texts).

János Fadrusz (1859-1903) was one of the greatest Hungarian sculptors and the creator of the Tuhutum statue in Zilah 8 which displays runic writing.

Gyula Sebestyén (1864-1943) was an ethnographer, who has written extensively about the runic script. He erected a memorial stone with runic writing in front of his villa at Lake Balaton.

Adorján Magyar (1887-1978) was a linguist, ethnographer, historian, artist and author of several articles concerning the runic script. 9

Anna Walter Fehér (1915-?) was a historian of writing and publisher of a related periodical; she has written a two-volume book which describes the runic writing, titled Az ékírástól a rovásírásig(From the cuneiform to the runic script).

Sándor Forrai (1913-2007) professor and Protestant presbyter, was the author of several books concerning the ancient Magyar runic script, and the organizer of several exhibitions which travel around Hungary.

IV. Destroyed Magyar runic texts
As we have already seen, the Magyar runic script contained a sign for every sound of the Hungarian language, so that it could be perfectly written down. In 1985, Sándor Forrai wrote the following:“…The writing of the Hungarian language with Latin letters was possible only with great distortion or not at all. The reader will always be a witness to the battle which our language fought against the intruding foreign letters.”

Then why don’t the Hungarians use their ancient writing as the Chinese, Japanese, Greeks, Arabs and Hebrews do?The answer can be found in the first sentences of this study: because it proves the ancient origin of the Hungarians in the Carpathian Basin and it is their letter of ownership to this region. It is for this reason that the cultural genocide began forcefully in the 10th and 11th centuries and has since continued. The Codices with runic writing and the carved runic sticks were burned; the Táltos were killed or incarcerated. Beginning with King St. István, all the kings – with the exception of King Mátyás in the 15th century !!– accepted the orders of the Roman Pope to destroy the so called pagan culture.

<<I guess that again the authors are not using corectly the term Hungarian here. Anyhow they should make clear distinctions between Proto-Hungarians -1250, Indo-Europeans that lived in Pannonia at -10.000, Turkish migrations (Hun/Avars) after the Roman Empire and the Magyars that came in +986. When they say that this writing proves the ancient origin of people found here when the Arpad group came in +896 they can not use the term ‘ancient Hungarians’. I guess that the term ‘ancestors of the Hungarians’ is more appropriate reffering to populations found by the Arpad groups when they came to Pannonia in +896, conquered by the migrating Magyars, integrated later in the ‘Hungarian nationa’. These ‘ancestors of the Hungarians’ being in much larger numbers absorbed the Finno-Ugric Magyars. Now what was the mix of these ‘ancestors of the Hungarians’ besides the obvious celtic/gepid/goth/hun/avar influences? That’s The Question.>>

András I., son of Vazul (also known as Vászoly), 10 issued an edict in 1047, which, under penalty of loss of wealth and head, forbade the use of the “ancient Scythian national religion” and the pagan writing. Béla, the younger brother of András I., eradicated the old Székely (Sicul) Hungarian names expressing rank. He had the old names of families, castles and towns changed to the names of saints and had the ancient family libraries burnt.

Mátyás Jenő Fehér writes in his book Középkori magyar inkvizíció(The inquisition of the Magyars in the Middle Ages) that there were Magyar documents and books well before the Halotti Beszéd (Funeral Sermon) and the Mária Siralom (The lament of Mary). 11

Unknown hands removed the book, printed in Scythian letters, which István Szamosközi saw in 1592, from the Library of the Duke of Florence. His report is verified by Antonius Maginus, an Italian geographer, who described this book in 1595.

We know from Anna Walter Fehér that the correspondence in runic writing of Prince Ferenc Rákóczi II (who lived in exile in Rodosto, Turkey) with the Spanish Court, where it was filed, was later made to disappear.

The notes of the friar and scientist János Kájoni, dated 1673, dealing with the “Hun-Magyar Runic Script” disappeared as well.

The collection of the runic writing of Mátyás Bél, and Pál Király, literary historian and director of a teacher’s training college (20th century) also mysteriously vanished.

Balázs Orbán (1830-1890), the chronicler of the Székely lands, mentions in the section dealing with the runic inscription of the Énlaka Church, which was still visible then, that “two other such Hun-Scythian inscriptions existed in Csík, in the Csíkszentmiklós and Gyergyószentmiklós churches, but both were destroyed by ignorant priests who considered them pagan remnants.”

Bálint Gábor Szentkatolnai (1844-1913) was a Hungarian scholar who spoke more than thirty languages. His collection of runic writings was ordered to be burnt by Pál Hunfalvy (formerly Hunsdorfer), the chief librarian of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, in order to prove his thesis that the Magyars did not have their own writing prior to the adoption of Christianity. Researchers of the 20th century, János Jerney, Károly Antal Fischer and Károly Szabó looked in vain for these writings of the Hungarian ancestors in the manuscript department, where they were originally registered.

Adorján Magyar writes that the Austrian government hired a secret agent by the name of Stromler, whose duty was the destruction of the ancient Magyar cultural treasures. He was later appointed to a leading position under the name of Thallóczy in the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

This list contains only a small portion of the runic writings which are mentioned in authenticated sources and which cannot be found in their original material form. Many more could have been stored in the 150 castles across historical Hungary, which were considered masterpieces from a strategic and architectural point of view and which the Habsburg Emperor Leopold ordered to be destroyed at the end of the 17th century.

V. The major rules of the Magyar runic script and their mastery

Alphabet by Adorján Magyar , Alphabet by Sándor Forrai

Alphabets of the Magyar runic script

1. The Magyar runic script has to be written from right to left because this is how most of the old samples were written. Writing from left to right is also possible but it is contrary to the traditional use. In this case, the letters have to be turned around and face from the left to the right.

2. The words have to be separated by spaces. Lower case and capital letters are not marked separately. Punctuation marks are the same as in the Latin script.

3. In the runic writing there are two letter K-s in use. According to Adorján Magyar, one is used word-finally, the other within the word. In Sándor Forrai’s opinion, the use of the two different K letters depends upon the order of the vowels within the word. According to the research of Klára Friedrich, the available runic writings do not verify these theses. It is simpler – and this shortcut is also agreed upon by Sándor Forrai – that we use only the -sign as the letter K. In the past, not only the (e)f, (e)l, (e)m, (e)n, (e)ny, (e)r, (e)s, (e)sz sounds were preceeded by the vowel e but all consonants. Therefore the (e)b, (e)c, (e)cs…and the..(e)k, which is represented by the runic sign .

4. It is a further important rule that we use only those letters which are attested in ancient runic texts.

5. There are no letters Q, W, X, Y in the Magyar runic script. They are represented as follows:

Picture 7 – The representation of q, w, x, and y

The original rovás is done upon a surface by a carving or scratching technique; the runic writing today can be conducted with a pencil, pen, or brush. The ancient letters are beautiful, pleasing and also suitable for decoration. At the Sashalom-Rákosszentmihály Church, in the XVI. district of Budapest, the National Anthem and the Szózat12 can be seen in runic script on two large enamel tiles.

The Magyar runic script is written from right to left, according to tradition. The ancient writings, like the Egyptian hieratic writing, the Etruscan, Pelasgian, Ancient-Greek, Phoenician and Latin capital letters usually followed a right to left path. In Gyula Sebestyén’s opinion, the direction of writing began to change when the linear, cursive writing took over. Three old Magyar runic relics were written from left to right to increase the difficulty of reading it in some politically dangerous situations. These are the following:

– The script in the Hungarian language, by Tamás Keteji Székely, from 1515, on the wall of the house of the Constantinople Legation;
– A poem by István Szamosközi, written against Emperor Rudolf Habsburg in 1604, in Latin;
– The letter from Peru, from 1756, written by János Zakariás, a Jesuit priest, in the Latin language.

Writing from right to left does not cause any difficulty even for pupils in lower grades, and those who are left-handed mention that it is easier for them to do so. There are some runic relics which were written in a vertical form, like the Margitsziget Stone (Margaret Island, Budapest) from the 13th century. On cemetery memorial carvings and on Székely gates we can also find runic texts, written in this vertical manner.

The characteristic of the runic script is that it is written in capital letters; the size of the letters is traditionally equal. Presently, the first letters of the sentences and the first letters of personal names can be marked with capitals, which helps the reading process.

Regrettably, there are no surviving runic relics which might give us a steadfast rule concerning punctuation. Today, we use the same punctuation that the Latin language has. Runic writing can be abbreviated in two ways. One way is the ligature which gives many playful alternatives for writing in the runic script. The following illustrations show Ferenc Dittler‘s ligatures.

Picture 8 – Ferenc Dittler’s ligatures

Another possibility for abbreviation comes with the omission of the letter E, although to facilitate understanding, this letter always needs to be present word-finally. Other vowels may be left out too, if there are several of the same vowels in a word; however, here the first vowel has to be written because only the omission of the vowel E is unambiguous.

Additionally, in times past, the long vowels were not marked separately; we find the first such forms only after the 16th century.VI. Numerical signs in the Magyar runic script

Picture 9 – Numerical signs in the Magyar runic script

<<wiki:Quite confusingly, the numerals are often referred to as integral part of the script, while their pairing is 20th century invention.>>

The writing of the numbers in the Magyar runic script also proceeds from right to left. The ancestors of the Hungarians managed their accounting in a very logical manner. They carved the debtor’s name into a wooden base, or burned the identification sign of the shepherd onto it and then carved the owed sum, or the number of the animals. After that the wooden plank was split down in the middle and each of the parties – the debtor and the lender – kept one half. They then went on and continued their usual business. When the time came to account for the lent sum, the two halves of the split sticks were placed side-by-side and the two had to match, thus preventing any possibility of cheating.

The ancestors of the Hungarians were also able to accomplish certain computations with the runic numbers but we have no old examples of these. The majority of runic experts believe that it is not possible to do computations with runic numbers. To prove them wrong, the graphic artist József Barta worked out a technique which makes the computation of the four basic mathematical computations possible and which was published in my 2006 booklet Új Rovásírás Tankönyv és Szakköri Ötlettár (New Rovás textbook with suggestions for writing groups).

The runic script is very easy to learn; children in the lower grades are able to acquire it in only 4-5 sessions, including the writing of numbers and the ligatures. It should be mentioned that the best age for beginning to learn this sign system is after third grade, around age 9. This is partly so because, in this way, no-one can claim that children’s potential problems in learning to read and write the Latin alphabet are due to interference from the runic script. 13 The learning of the runic writing has no upper age-limit. Mrs. János Egerszegi, the mother of swimming champion, Krisztina Egerszegi, learned runic writing as a grandmother and transcribed the entire epic poem János vitéz by poet Sándor Petőfi into runic script.

VII. Preservation and promotion of the runic script. Hungarians have been able to preserve the writing-system of their ancestors and its remaining examples in spite of prohibitions and persecutions. We are grateful to those who chiseled it into stone, carved it into wood, scratched it into clay, spindle-heads, needle holders or who wrote it on parchment, slate, paper and the walls of churches.

The scout movement played a great part in the preservation and transmission of the Magyar runic script and, even though this movement was banned by the Communists after 1945, it continued its efforts at preservation, in exile. Beginning in the 1970’s, Sándor Forrai, taking on the triple task of research, education and propagation, familiarized a wide circle of his countrymen with the writing of their ancestors, in newspaper articles and traveling exhibitions, showing it on 125 large sized pictures. This knowledge was greatly increased by the research, decipherments and studies of archaeologist and museum director Dezső Csallány and Anna Walter Fehér, whose two-volume book, Az ékírástól a rovásírásig / From cuneiform to rovás script, was published in Buenos Aires in 1975. It greatly added to the resurrection of the ancient writing that Csaba Nyers, an artist, created a postcard, using Adorján Magyar’s runic alphabet. Following the lead of these four researchers and authors, new contributions appeared with independent research results, publishing excerpts from Sándor Forrai’s or Anna Walter Fehér’s works. The official position of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences has been to ignore or deny the existence of the Magyar runic script. Instead, imposed theories of its Phoenician, Türk, Kazár, Aramaic, Ancient Semitic, or Ancient Slavic origin have been promoted and attempts made to validate them as such, even though the ethnogenesis and literacy of these people occurred thousands of years later than those of the Magyar ancestors.

Gábor Szakács, writer and newspaper columnist, organized a runic writing contest in 1997 in the XVI. district of Budapest for elementary and high-school students. As a result of the success of this competition, the already elderly Sándor Forrai visited Szakács and the writer of this article. After several meetings, Forrai asked them to continue his life work, which encompasses the research, teaching and propagation of the Magyar runic script. Szakács extended these competitions to the entire Carpathian Basin and, with the exception of the ancient Őrvidék area which is now part of Burgenland, Austria, half of the competitors come from all over the Carpathian Basin, even from beyond the 1920 Trianon borders. The great number of applicants (700 students) made the organization of pre-screening exams necessary in several parts of the country. Due to these these competitions, in several schools the teaching of the Magyar runic script was added to the curriculum. In several instances the high-school and sometimes the elementary-school students help their schoolmates prepare for the competition. Since the accomplishments of Sándor Forrai were never acknowledged in official professional circles, our Runic Writing Association, to honor him, adopted his name as the name of this organization; this example was followed by other runic writing groups who owed their origin to the works of Gábor Szakács.

Further tasks and suggestions:

– The inclusion into this competition of all Hungarians who live beyond the Trianon borders, or on other continents.
– The organisation of newer runic writing circles in foreign lands where Hungarians live.
– The placement of road signs with runic-writing in all Hungarian cities and settlements. This has already begun in Székelykeresztúr 14 and Gyergyócsomafalva 15.
– Preparation of name-plates in runic script for the doors of houses and apartments.
– The teaching of the basic concepts of the runic script in schools, as part of the curriculum.
– The preparation for re-publication of the basic works of Miklós Debreczenyi, Dezső Csallány, Anna Walter Fehér and Sándor Forrai.
– The publication of newspapers and of classical works in runic script.
– The simplification of runic script in computer programs.
– The inclusion of runic script into the Unicode system.
– The oversight and protection of the remnants of runic writings, especially those beyond the Trianon borders.

These tasks can begin in the present location of interested individuals who are willing to make efforts to promote and preserve our ancient culture. After all, the rovás writing is part of our sacred and oppressed heritage, and its mastery is the noble duty of every member of the nation.

Picture 11 – “May God’s blessing be upon the Magyar nation”
(from the book of Károly Antal Fischer)

1 Vince publ. 2000 Back2 Currently called Cluj in Rumanian. Back3 (=Nagyszentmiklós is now called Sinnicolau Mare in Rumanian. The treasure is presently housed in Vienna.=) Back4 The Táltos were a high priestly class. Nobody can simply become a Táltos, they are chosen by God, and fulfill their calling by His grace. Back5 Csíkszentmiklós is now Nicolesti in Rumanian. Back6 Csíkszentmárton is now Sínmartin in Rumanian. Back7 Énlaka is now Inlaceni in Rumanian. Back8 Zilah is now Zalau in Rumaniana. Back9 His booklet published in Switzerland titled Ancient Magyar Rovás Writing can be seen at http://www.acronet.net/~magyar/english/96-10/contents.htm. Back10 Vazul was killed in a most cruel manner by unknown persons, probably faithful to the court; hot lead was poured into his ears. Back11 These have been considered by official scholarship the first Hungarian written documents. Back12 Szózat is a patriotic poem by Mihály Vörösmarty (1800-1855) which is close in spirit to the National Anthem (Translator). Back13 On the other hand, Hungarian children have to be diligent to achieve the best results in all other subjects in order to be able to get into the schools of higher education because, regrettably, in these the number of Hungarian children is diminishing. According to statistics from April 2007, Hungarian students comprise only one third of the medical student body. Back14 Székelykeresztúr is now called Cristuru Secuiesc in Romanian. Back15 Gyergyócsomafalva is now called Ciumani in RumaniaRomanian. Back

The Magyar rovás make up an alphabet of 40 letters, plus several ligatures or letters representing consonant clusters or syllables.Some 24 rovás are similar to Vinča signs, to Germanico runes, to letters of the Asiatic runic scripts, to letters of the earliest Italic and Helladic alphabets. Some 16 letters appear to be later additions: they are rounded and/or do not comply with the 5 rules of the runic scripts (see page 45 of the book) and/or are not similar to Vinča or later European signs. These 16 letters were added to the rovás in Central Asia, when the Magyars were no longer carving hard materials, but drawing on parchment, as the Parthians did.Out of the 24 letters that are similar to Germanico runes, 16 appear to be very similar, but some 8, which could correspond to signs added by the Celts to represent their Indo-European phonemes, are not. In particular, the phoneme [θ] was written in the North and is kept in Irish; but it was written in the south and, still similar, is kept in Greek.

The Germanico runes and the Magyar rovás could both have an ancestor in an earlier 16-letter alphabet. In fact, the original 16-letter Flavio *VUARK, but also the *Pannonico alphabet, can be easiliy reconstructed by comparing the rovás and the runes with some of the most ancient alphabets: Esik, Lemnos, Camuni, Veio, Marsiliana, and the Venetic and Athenian alphabets.The Esik, Lemnos, and Camuni alphabets remain so far undeciphered. The Esik and Lemnos alphabets appear to be congruent with the limited Finno-Ugric phonology: the Esik alphabet does not contain any of the characters added in Europe by the Germans and the Celts; the Lemnos alphabet only contains some of them. These three isolate alphabets have kept some of the most ancient *VUARK characters.

In Esik (nearby ‘Alma Ata’ = ‘Mother/Father of Apple’, Hungarian name of the former capital city of Kazakhstan), in the grave of an Amazon Shaman Princess (J. W. Jay) buried with a rich treasure, an inscription on a silver bowl was found. The grave has been dated back to the 5th century B.C. The characters that make up this inscription consist of: 12 characters identical to 12 Flavio *VUARK characters, two *characters identical to another two of the *VUARK, and a few possible ligatures. This inscription cannot be Phoenician or Greek because some of its characters and legatures have never been written around the Mediterranean Sea (except along the western shores of the Adriatic Sea, where Pannonico populations are supposed to have migrated from Illyria). Instead, these characters and ligatures do appear in later alphabets of the Turanian plains, in the Siberian rovás, in the Magyar rovás, in the Nü Shu syllabary (Yunnan, China), and in the Kaganga script (Sumatra) (see the book ‘Honfoglalás… the Magyars are back home’ for other cultural markers that link all these regions). The Esik script contains no characters at all that resemble any Indo-European addition: the Hungarian population that migrated to Esik could have been able, while in Europe, to keep itself separated from the Celts.

When the Camuni alphabets were carved, the Indo-European phonemes had already been added; but the corresponding characters were different from both those used in the Germanico runes and in the Magyar rovás. The Camuni alphabets prove that the Germanico and the Pannonico were alternative characters for the same [a] phoneme. In Roman time, the [a] was still written in Aquincum (Magyar Nemzeti Museum, Lapidarium). The Camuni alphabets had a letter between D and E that also the Ugaritic abjad had, in the same position. This letter had disappeared from all European alphabets in the beginning of the 1st millennium B.C. (or had been moved between N and O, as it also happened in Phoenicia!). The Camuni alphabets also show an ideogram, which was copied in the Ugaritic abjad, but was never transliterated by the Semites. The Camuni alphabets have characters that do appear in the Ugaritic script, but do not appear in the Phoenician abjad. Thus, it is impossible that the Camuni alphabets could have been copied from the Phoenicians, and it would be nonsense to say that it was copied from the Romans! Instead, it is possible that the Ugaritics could have copied from Europe alphabets with features of the Camuni ones.

The Veio and Marsiliana alphabets have been found in Etruria: these two alphabets were not (not) Etruscan alphabets: the Etruscans never, or only occasionally, used some 8 letters of these alphabets. The Etruscans never added the Indo-European phonemes to their alphabet: some exceptions were graphically and phonetically unstable in time and space (the characters and the associated phonology changed with time, and from one region to another), in most cases different from the Phoenician letters, and in some cases different from any other known script (e.g.: 8 for [f]). The Marsiliana and Veio alphabets could be Pannonico alphabets, a few centuries older than their official dating (8th-7th century B.C.): in fact, they are more similar to the alphabet that the Ugaritics could have copied than to the later Phoenician abjad (see table 60 of the book).

The Germanico runes (Futhark)
The Germanico runes consisted of 24 letters. Eight of them were not stable in space and time and/or do not comply with the rules of the runes. The remaining 16 runes, more stable in time and space, represent the 16 phonemes that are still peculiar to the Finnish alphabet. The phonemes [b], [d], [γ], [w], [z], [f], [θ], (and probably [o] in ancient times) are not used, even these days, in words of Finnish origin. These phonemes were added by the Germans and correspond to the 8 letters that are graphically and phonetically unstable in time and space in the many different European runic scripts.When the German populations left Scandinavia, the Vikings started writing again with a 16-letter alphabet, congruent with a limited, Finno-Ugric, phonology.

The Flavio VUARKAll the earliest European alphabets, including the most ancient Athenian and Etruscan ones, the Linear B, and the Cypriot syllabary (Facchetti, Kirkhoff, ancient scripts.com, et alia), only had the letters needed to represent those Finno-Ugric 16 phonemes.Tocharian, the so-called ‘Indo-European’ language of the Tarim Basin, (possibly an intertwined language Hungarian/Gandhara Sanskrit), also had a limited phonology (Wikipedia). Hungarian also, in ancient time, was lacking the [b], [d], [γ] phonemes (M. Alinei).
Ancient agglutinative languages, including Sumerian according to some scholars, had (and several ones still have) a limited phonology. All the ancient European alphabets therefore derive from an original 16-letter European alphabet. The letters for the Indo-European phonemes were added later on, when the Indo-Europeans had learnt how to write.Both the Germanico runes and the Magyar rovás derive from an earlier, pre-Indo-European 16-letter *VUARK alphabet congruent with the ancient Finno-Ugric phonology, and were made up with characters identical or similar to Vinča signs. The European scripts later inherited these same *VUARK letters, with the same original phonetic values. (See table 43 of the book, which shows that all the original letters of the *VUARKs and of the *Pannonico alphabet were later used by the most ancient European alphabets).

The Flavio *VUARK could have been brought to the shores of the Baltic Sea by those Hungarian populations that migrated from the Carpathian Basin northwards at the beginning of the 2nd millennium B.C.. (See the book ‘Honfoglalás… the Magyars are back home’, page 85).The Flavio *VUARK evolved in two different scripts: Pannonico *VUARK (from which the Magyar rovás derived) and Finnic *VUARK (from which the Germanico runes derived). There are only a few letters which make the difference between these two *VUARKs. Astonishingly, the Magyar rovás, the Mother of all alphabets, kept both variations (and also variations which shall appear in Southern Europe): and ; and ; and ; and , and ; and …. up until the 19th century A.D..

All the ancient alphabets quoted in the book had a feature in common: none of them was ever designed with any horizontal stroke. Such a strict rule could only be a religious dictate. Note also the many multiples of 8 for the number of letters of ancient alphabets (16, 24, 40).
In any case, a ‘reconstruction’, be it linguistic or historical, is pure speculation as long as a proof of its existence, at the supposed time, is not found.

The Ugaritic abjad
The Ugaritic abjad (abjad = consonantal alphabet, without vowels) is written in cuneiform. Cuneiform was not in the tradition of the region. The local writing tradition is that of Byblos, (undecyfered), which, nevertheless, appears to have already borrowed several rovás and/or Vinča signs in the 19th century B.C. (see table 49, proel.com).
The Ugaritic script is written from left to right in a region that always, and until these days, writes right to left. In Beth Shemesh (Israel) also, the Ugaritic script was used; but it had been modified to become a right to left script, modified to fit the local tradition.

The Ugaritic abjad contains letters for vowels: the Semites did not use the vowels of the Ugaritic script and still these days do not use vowels in their scripts. The Ugaritic characters that corresponded to vowels in Europe were used by the Semites as semivowels or laryngeals; the letters for [i] and [u] were not even ever transliterated. The three vowel characters used by the Ugaritics were only used in foreign words.

No Northern Semitic script has ever transliterated eight letters of the Ugaritic script: they were alien phonemes, vowels, or ideograms (see table 55, Proel.com). Who would ever design an alphabet including letters that would never be used?
The letter order of the Ugaritic abjad is not the traditional Semitic letter order – h, l, h, m… The Beth Shemesh alphabet was also modified in order to have a Semitic letter order.
The Ugaritic abjad was alien to the region in which it was written: this is why it had a short life: 2 centuries.

The Ugaritic abjad cannot have been designed in Phoenicia.
The Ugaritic abjad was an attempt at writing the *Pannonico alphabet by using the cuneiform writing technique borrowed from the Acadians.
It could have even been originally a secret script to be used between Pannonico traders and a friendly Levantine population (or a Pannonico ‘Middle East settlement’): in fact, the Pannonici would have easily understood it and the Levantines would have used their clay tablets and their writing techniques. The encryption key was very efficient: nobody has found it during 3,300 years! It is not me the monster, but all those who looked not attentively at the Ugarit tablet because it could not serve their causes. If you attentively look at the tablet, you easily see how similar it is to the ancient European scripts!

In the 11th century B.C., the Phoenicians converted again the cuneiform script into linear, using the reverse key and rules that had been used to transcribe the *Pannonico alphabet into Ugaritic: in fact, they left in the Phoenician abjad the same scribal mistakes that appear in the Ugaritic abjad: the B has only one hump. Such a B, with a single hump, was never copied by any ancient European script. Nor the head of the ox (aleph) was ever copied by the Europeans (except the Athenians. See page 59 of the book for the origin of the A). Nor the C… Et cetera.

The Greeks only ‘copied’ letters that they already used! The Greeks did not copy the Phoenician abjad. The Athenians and the Lemnos peoples used the 16-letter alphabet as long as they were allowed to speak and write their own language, until the beginning of the first millennium B.C.: only at that time the letters needed to represent Indo-European phonemes started appearing in Greece (Kirkhoff).
The Greeks did not need to invent the vowels. In fact, the vowels existed already in the Old European *Pannonico alphabet: so much so that the Ugaritics did copy the vowels from the *Pannonico, but did not use them. The Semites used some of them as semivowels or laryngeals. They never transliterated the signs for [i] and [u].

The Europeans did not copy their alphabets from the Phoenicians; but the Phoenicians, the Greeks, and the Etruscans did copy the European *Pannonico alphabet. The reconstructed *Pannonico alphabet did exist: in fact, the Ugaritics copied it in the 14th century B.C..Vasil Ilyov has compiled a table in order to show the derivation of the Cyrillic alphabet from the Vinča signs (he is correct: all alphabets came from there!). The table proves that in Macedonia (region of the Vinča Culture), between 1650 and 1200 B.C (the time in which the *Pannonico was brought to Ugarit) all the characters of the *Pannonico alphabet were written in the local inscriptions.

ConsequencesGimbuteniė was right: the Vinča signs were, or generated, the ‘Old European’ script. The Flavio *VUARK, which was the Mother of all other alphabets, derived from the Vinča signs. Most of the letters of the *VUARK survived in the Futhark and in the Magyar rovás, and most, modified by the time, still survive in the Roman alphabet that we all use every day.The Hungarians were in Europe in the 14th century B.C.. (See ‘Honfoglalás… the Magyars are back home’). They brought the 16-letter Flavio *VUARK alphabet to Northern Europe, where it evolved as Germanico runes. They also brought the *Pannonico alphabet to Central Asia, where it evolved as Magyar rovás, and other Asiatic scripts.

The Europeans, who had an alphabet before the Indo-Europeans arrived in Europe, spoke agglutinative languages with a limited phonology. The Finno-Ugric substratum is responsible for most of the phonetic mutations in ancient Europe (see a further book).Gimbuteniė correctly described the ‘Old European’ society: matriarchal, egalitarian, peace loving… She only made a mistake: those populations were not nomadic, war faring, pastoralist Indo-Europeans; they were sedentary, democratic, peace loving Hungarians.
The Hungarians are the most ancient population that shows up in the History of Humanity, with an alphabet, and maybe with a script (the Tatarlaka tablet).

<<Is it correct to name Hungarians the people that formed in the Danube/Carpathian basin in paleolitic, who later spread north and across Asia up to China/Tarim basin?? I think not. But I agree, in the Danube/Carpathian basin, down to Macedonia the Vinca culture seems to be the mother of all writings.>>

(The only other origin being hypothesised in order to unveil the ‘mystery’ of the Ugaritic script is that of a derivation from the Levantine Bronze Age scripts (proto-Canaanite and proto-Synaitic). This hypothesis is maintained (jointly!) by Jewish, Christian, and Lebanese (Islamic) scholars and Ministers of faith attempting to prove the historicity of the Bible by means of the Ugaritic literature, in view of a possible final theory by which the Bible was not an oral heritage, but it was written in Proto-Canaanite.
The clues which would support this theory are: the proto-Canaanite/Synaitic signs were used in the same region in which the Ugaritic script was written; the Ugaritic script was also used for writing a Canaanite language; the names of the Phoenician letters were copied by the Greeks (this may be true, but does not prove that the Ugaritic and/or the Phoenician script derived from the proto-Canaanite/Synaitic signs).

Out of the many known Bronze Age signs, only a few are vaguely similar to some Phoenician characters (see pages 135-137 of the book). Nevertheless, those Ministers of faith do not explain how the proto-Canaanite/Synaitic signs would have evolved into the Ugaritic script and, later on, into the Phoenician script: they pretend this should be an ‘act of faith’. The Levantine scripts were always pictographic, as also proved by their supposed acrophonic derivation. The European scripts were symbolic thousands of years before any pictographic script appeared. Writing is the symbolic (and only the symbolic) representation of speech. BS).

Caveat:continuing studying the Ugaritic literature, could lead to the conclusion that the christian monoteism derived from the Pannonico essentially monoteistic faith, (as it appears to be both in Europe and Central Asia (Mother Goddess, Sun Goddess, Sky God) – see the book ‘Honfoglalas, the Magyars are back home’). Besides, the ‘Virgin Mother’ was a Phoenician heritage (Tanit, the ‘Virgin Mother’ of the Punics of Karthago). The resurrection belonged to the Egyptian mythology (Osiris). Ishtar and Inanna… The Pannonici could have brought to Phoenicia not only their alphabet, but also their religion, and their conical hat, which became the Lebade.

Thank you for the links. I do not know what do you mean by your ancestors, really. There are many things implied in your comment, I will not enter in any debate, anyhow in the page from my blog I gathered information that anybody can judge as they want, I am not saying anything myself. Maybe I agree with certain things but I have to read a lot more before I take a position. I really think that you have not read carefully what is in that page please do not put words in my mouth, I rather think that there are some misunderstandings. I must say again that I do not care for debates, at least in writing that is taking too much time, a lost time. If we meet somehow maybe we can talk directly, to avoid misunderstandings.

An interesting article (clearly the author put a lot of efforts into research), but some scientific comments HAVE to be taken into consideration. The magyar people are very recent in the area compared with native population, to be more precise starting with the 9-th century A.D., when they started to move from the nothern pontic steppe, which was also a temporary location of about 4 centuries – their original location being URAL mountains steppes. Through their history (but prior to their arrival in the Pannonian lands), the initial ugric tribes combined with turcic and bulgarian (please dont think of modern day Bulgaria, it happened more to the east) elements, when its possible to have borrowed their alphabet. With the 9th century, when they came in the modern day Hungary area, but prior to starting the well known expansion wars, they have mixed with the native population (of celtic, geto-dacian, etc origin) and started to use their alphabet, with inscriptions found everywhere throughout balkans. This writing is of course very old, but its origin is clearly local – any sane advised person can confirm you that. Personally I like the idea of all of us being brothers, and believe me when you go deeper in history (I meant prehistory) you realize that, but you need to rationally look at the reality and cannot mix-up things like Vinca culture and magyar people, then say magyars were present in the area since tens (!!!) of thousand years in the region … that’s childish.